DOES GOD REALLY CARE ABOUT MANKIND?

Question: Why does God, whom we know as the cause and creator of everything, who is all powerful and goodness personified, allow crimes such as mass killings and rape to happen on earth? Do these things happen with his consent or is He powerless to prevent them? Does God really care about mankind?

Firstly, there is no doubt that God is the creator and is all powerful. God created this world and created man. But His goodness did not stop there. He gave man a very big gift, something that he did not confer on those lower than man, namely plants and animals. He gave man a mind to think with, free will to choose, He gave him feelings and emotions, and a consciousness or soul to help him make decisions. Having done that, He rested. It would have been very easy for God to make man His slave, make him into nothing more than an automated robot, who would be pre-programmed, and who would have severe limitations on what he could do and what he could not. But in His goodness, His generosity and His ultimate love for mankind, God gave man complete freedom to do what he wants to.

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It is very easy for us to understand that the thing we all value very much in our lives, more than anything else, is our freedom. No human being can be happy and peaceful in captivity, even if he is bound by chains of gold. Freedom is his biggest wish and aspiration and God has been kind enough to give him that gift.

God also knows that this gift is likely to be highly misused by man, since man has a mind of his own and also has feelings and emotions. When man is in the grip of his mind and its thoughts, fuelled by his emotions, his instincts and his feeling, he is likely to go astray, causing mental and physical damage to other human beings. And since all human beings are God’s children, it is obvious that, as a parent, He would not like to see one child destroying another. But God’s dilemma is such that if He controls the behaviour of even one man, He is restricting his freedom. If He does not control man, then in all probability, man will destroy others, destroy himself and will destroy this planet, in no time. In order to find a solution to this, God had to put certain laws and systems in place, so that the earth and its inhabitants are self sustaining, and do not destroy themselves. These laws and systems are what we know by various names---destiny, fate, luck, and karma.

Due to our limited intelligence and knowing, we are obviously not able to understand how these things work, though we do know, from our own experiences and those of others, that these things work perfectly, at the right time and at the right places. While we call God our creator, we also automatically know that every creation comes to an end, and therefore, God is also the protector and the destroyer, as embodied in the Trinity of Hindu mythology, of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh, who are creator, protector and destroyer, respectively. When we see death and destruction, it would do us well to remember that the work of destruction is also within the purview of God.

When a heinous crime is committed, we cannot immediately find any reason for it. Why did so many innocents die? Why did someone get molested? Why did someone suffer from a painful, terminal disease? Why did death come to someone at such an early age? We may never know why these things happen, although many theories have been propounded about our sins in the past, either in this life or in our previous lives, for which we have to pay our karmic debts, at some given time and place. The only way we can avoid fear and panic, and achieve peace of mind amidst all the violence and chaos in the world, is to trust that everything we see, although seeming like man’s work, has been factored in by God, are occurring because human beings are vastly different from one another, are occurring because we all have the gift of free will which we can choose to use rightly or wrongly, and that the right systems are in place to punish the offenders, and to see that life sustains itself, on this planet, for many more thousands of years to come. Finally, if one studies the history of the world, one would quickly realize that the sustenance of life and of this world is far more important than any individuals or group of individuals.